Hollywood Kiss

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In real life, kisses aren't always perfect. They can be badly aimed, mis-timed, messy and slobbery, have teeth clacking together, or involve accidentally choking on your partner's tongue. Small lip nibbles can end in pain and chewing gum get lost in the proceedings.

Hollywood doesn't have any of these problems.

In fiction, there is the Hollywood Kiss; the perfectly-aimed, long, sensual yet tender, closed-mouth kiss that appears in countless movies and TV shows. Usually a sign of true love, these kisses are wonderful, romantic and always look beautiful on screen.

Compare Hollywood Sex. Often goes hand-in-hand with True Love's Kiss or The Big Damn Kiss.

Examples of Hollywood Kiss include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • Batman and Catwoman get one in the Hush storyline.
  • Rogue and Gambit used to have one of these almost anytime they kissed because of the rarity presented by Rogue's powers. They have one in X-men #41 as they think the world is ending and two in the 1997 X-men Annual.

Film


Literature

  • Subverted and lampshaded in Vampire High, the first time Cody tries to kills Ilena. She's obviously waiting for it, but when he leans in, he almost misses her mouth entirely. When he returns home later, he sees that his parents are watching old Humphrey Boggart movies and guesses that the characters in those movies never screw up kissing.


Live Action TV

  • Ross and Rachel's first kiss in Friends.
  • Averted by Kate and Sawyer's first kiss on Lost, which still looks messy and sweaty as you'd expect two people kissing in a jungle to look like. Reportedly, the two actors even discussed whether to do this type of kiss or really kiss. The second won out.
  • Surprisingly averted in Glee with Kurt and Blaine, whose Big Damn Kiss was without a doubt a full-on snog. Played completely straight, however, with Finn and Rachel a few episodes later.


Video Games

  • In Final Fantasy VIII, after defeating the Big Bad and returning home, Squall and Rinoa share a long-awaited Hollywood Kiss.
    • Final Fantasy X's infamous kissing scene between Yuna and Tidus also fits this trope.


Western Animation

  • Disney canon:
    • Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs.
    • Sleeping Beauty.
    • The Little Mermaid ends with a beautiful Hollywood Kiss.
    • And of course The Princess and the Frog. Naveen can kiss any princess, even the Princess Of Mardi Gras or his wife. No masquerade princesses for him!
      • Although it is parodied a few times. When Naveen tries to kiss Tiana earlier on, while he's clearly trying to make it all romantic, his lips are still huge, squishy, and rather gross (it's from Tiana's perspective, and she finds the idea of kissing a frog to be disgusting). Later, when Naveen goes to kiss Charlotte, it once again winds up as something very romantic only for the clock to strike just before they make it. Charlotte, hoping that the clock is a little fast, desperately grabs Naveen and gives him several sloppy kisses. When she lets him go, his face is covered in lipstick stains and he does not look impressed.
    • Let's not forget Aladdin and Jasmine's kiss.
    • Beauty and the Beast has one that is described in the script as "the kiss they have each been waiting a lifetime for."
  • Played straight and for laughs (parodying the Beauty and the Beast kiss) at the end of Shrek. When Princess Fiona and Shrek kiss, Fiona is covered in light. The light shatters most of the stained glass windows in the chapel. Dragon punches out the remaining glass. Then, we see the result of True Love's First Kiss.
  • Averted for the most part in The DCAU. It's possible that it is because of the fact the characters are so realistically drawn that kissing tends to come off looking more like the lips of one character just mashing up against the other's instead of something romantic and sweet.
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